US President Donald Trump may not like it, but Russia still plans to bring its Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany online by the end of 2019. Neither the threat of US sanctions nor legal efforts by the European Commission have succeeded so far in derailing the 55 Bcm/year project. At this stage it looks like only Russian President Vladimir Putin has the power to stop it being built, and it’s difficult to see what would persuade him to do that. The European Commission’s complaints are that Nord Stream 2 will concentrate too much Russian gas into one import route to Europe, and significantly reduce Russian gas transit through Ukraine. Russia disagrees on the supply security point and is very clear that it wants to reduce transit through Ukraine. Its state-owned gas company Gazprom plans to build Nord Stream 2 across the Baltic Sea along a similar route to its 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream pipeline, which came online in 2011. Adding Nord Stream 2 would allow Russia to send up to 110 Bcm/year to Europe through the Baltic Sea route – around the same volume that it was sending through Ukraine in the early 2000s. Volumes via Ukraine… continue reading